Introspection
by Lileigh
Summary: Andy's thoughts about the shooting in Ep. 7.  Dark and angsty.


A/N: _I was watching episode 7 again tonight, because I just can't get enough of that Sam and Andy goodness. This time, though, what really struck me was the devastation on Andy's face as she sat alone in her apartment (Brava, Missy!). I began to imagine what she must be thinking and this is the result. _

**_Disclaimer:_**_ I do not own Rookie Blue or it's characters. _

John Donne wrote: "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." He went on to pen many more insightful and significant things also, but for the purposes of tonight's introspection the significant words we want to concentrate on are in the sentence that he wrote just before that.

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

If we look long and hard enough, we can find quotations to describe any event. Words. Letters strung across a page. It oftentimes seems impossible that anyone else will be able to understand the pivotal moments of our lives. How could they? After all, no one else has experienced this particular thing in just this particular way.

No one else is me.

The John Donne quote was something I had always thought I understood. And in a removed, intellectual way, I did. But that was my mistake. You see, there is nothing removed about being involved in mankind. And there is nothing like feeling a gun recoil in your hand to prove that.

It almost makes me want to laugh when people tell me that I should talk about it. They tell me it's okay. They tell me that I did the right thing. I'm sure somewhere down the road, I'll be saying those very things myself. But right now, I wonder how they can know that to be true. They weren't there. They don't know what I know. Hell, I'm not even sure _I_ know what I know.

I sit here in the dark and my hands won't stop shaking and my tears won't stop falling. My eyes are burning, but I can't close them because every time I do, I see him.

He knew I would kill him. He wanted me to. I could see it in his face. It was his last act on this earth. His last murder, if you will. In order to stop a killer, I had to become one. And in doing so, I, with his full complicity, killed a part of myself. I can't find a resolution to that. I can't find absolution for that. I am lost in it.

I want to scream. I want to throw things. I want to drive out to the North Beach and shoot my gun into nothingness the way my dad used to do. I want to lose myself in something else. _Anything_ else.

Talk about it. Right. Who would I talk to?

I can't talk to a shrink. Intellectual understanding versus actual understanding. Remember?

I can't talk to my friends. They think I'm a hero, as if killing a killer was somehow a rite of passage into the brotherhood of cops. _Rock and roll, McNally._

Should I talk to Luke? I might have tried that if he had made time for me. But that's par for the course. He doesn't seem to ever have time to help me through the hard stuff. At the moment, I am uncharitably thinking him to be a very fair-weather boyfriend and certainly not the kind of man I need right now. Besides, he _hunts_ killers. He doesn't try to help them work through what they've done. He punishes them for it.

Should I talk to my dad? Not even a consideration. _I _have to be strong for _him_. _I _have to help _him _through. It hasn't been the other way around in a long time.

What about Sam? He _did_ offer. Even if he hasn't said so, I know instinctively that he has gone through this himself. It was there in his face in that dark basement. It was there in his voice when he was sitting by my side in the locker room. He knows and he understands. He can help me through this like he has everything else since I met him. _He's_ the one I need right now.

I close my eyes and when I open them, I am standing on his doorstep. When he opens the door, I pray that he is alone. I don't have the strength to be by myself tonight. I am diminished by that man's death; most devastatingly, by my part in it. There is a huge gaping hole inside me and it's filled with a scream I don't have the ability to give voice to. Somewhere in there, too, that bell is tolling away. For me.

Grief, fear and loss threaten to swamp and drown me. I desperately wrap myself into the safe haven that is Sam. Right now, talking is the last thing I want to do.


End file.
